Definitions for bafflegab

Slang. confusing or generally unintelligible jargon; gobbledegook: an insurance policy written in bafflegab impenetrable to a lay person.

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Citations for bafflegab

Victor had no eye for shape or form…He judged the tone and rhythm of the plans by how the architects could sing their wares, what bafflegab they used.Jim Crace, Arcadia, 1992

On direct exam, the expert--a psychiatrist--had cobbled together a questionable opinion and wrapped it in arrogant psychiatric bafflegab to make it sound like scientific certainty.James W. McElhaney, "Make 'Em Laugh," ABA Journal, October, 2002

Origin of bafflegab

1950-1955

Bafflegab is a portmanteau of baffle and gab and is credited to Milton A. Smith, a lawyer for the US Chamber of Commerce during the 1950s. Milton humorously defined this word as "multiloquence characterized by consummate interfusion of circumlocution or periphrasis, inscrutability, and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation commonly utilitzed for promulgations implementing Procrustean determinations by governmental bodies."